DNA barcoding fishes from the Congo and the Lower Guinean provinces: assembling a reference library for poorly inventoried fauna
- Sonet, Gontran
- Snoeks, Jos
- Nagy, Zoltan
- Vreven, Emmanuel
- Boden, Gert
- Breman, Floris
- Decru, Eva
- Hanssens, Mark
- Ibala Zamba, Armel
- Jordaens, Kurt
- Mamonekene, Victor
- Musschoot, Tobias
- Van Houdt, Jeroen
- Van Steenberge, Maarten
- Lunkayilakio Wamuini, Soleil
- Verheyen, Erik
DOIAbstract
The Congolese and Lower Guinean ichthyological provinces are understudied hotspots of the global fish diversity. Here, we barcoded 741 specimens from the Lower and Middle Congo River and from three major drainage basins of the Lower Guinean ichthyological province, Kouilou‐Niari, Nyanga and Ogowe. We identified 194 morphospecies belonging to 82 genera and 25 families. Most morphospecies (92.8%) corresponded to distinct clusters of DNA barcodes. Of the four morphospecies present in both neighbouring ichthyological provinces, only one showed DNA barcode divergence <2.5%. A small fraction of the fishes barcoded here (12.9% of the morphospecies and 16.1% of the barcode clusters representing putative species) were also barcoded in a previous lar...
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